Experiencing the engineering challenges of game development

Seven years after the introduction of project-based Computer Science (CS) education at Delft University of Technology, its highly instructive and motivating potential has been more than confirmed. Among the projects offered, the second year Games project has justly become the integrator course par excellence of the Computer Science BSc curriculum. More importantly, the Games project brings CS students for the first time to work in a realistic and interdisciplinary game development team, involving fellow students pursuing a Game Design and Development degree at the Utrecht School of the Arts. The reputation and popularity of the Games project are being effectively exploited by the Faculty for the urgent purpose of recruiting new CS students. We describe several project features that we have developed and exploited throughout the years for these purposes, mostly in close collaboration with older CS students and alumni, and with experts from various Dutch game development companies. Among other goals, we seek that candidate students experience the contribution of the various disciplines involved in the development of a computer game, and acquire a no-nonsense view on the surrounding game industry. So far our efforts have been rewarded with a steady trend of an increasing yearly enrolment.

@InProceedings { BI09a,
  author       = "Bidarra, Rafael",
  title        = "Experiencing the engineering challenges of game development",
  booktitle    = "Proceedings of 37th Engineering Education Conference SEFI 2009",
  month        = "jul",
  year         = "2009",
  address      = "Rotterdam, The Netherlands",
  url          = "http://graphics.tudelft.nl/Publications-new/2009/BI09a"
}